The Neediest Cases; Losing Job and Pride, but Finding a Footing in a Work Program

By ALEXIS REHRMANN

Published: January 8, 2007

Nancy Harris wants to make a few things very clear.

''I'm not crazy. I'm not stupid,'' Ms. Harris said. ''I just want to work. I'm used to working.''

Not working pulled her into a depression. Not working took her from a steady salary to unemployment compensation and eventually to public assistance. Not working left her with no means to pay her share of her son's college tuition.

Ms. Harris, 51, has been unemployed for more than a year. Losing her job, she said, has been devastating.

Ms. Harris remembers exactly when she was hired as a member of the housekeeping staff at Harlem Hospital Center: Nov. 21, 1998. She valued her work. ''I got to learn a lot about how to care for the sickly, and for the public, and to sanitize the hospitals,'' she said.

One August night in 2005, she was working the graveyard shift and went to a deli on her break to buy a turkey on a roll. By morning, she had food poisoning.

She was sick for two weeks. ''It got worse and worse,'' she said. ''I was walking around here like a dog. I couldn't stand up.''

Ms. Harris was reluctant to ask for help from her son, Alphonso Howlett, 21, who was away at college. ''He's in school. He's getting an education. I don't need him to be distracted,'' she said.

A neighbor insisted that she go to the hospital, and it was determined that she had appendicitis.

The appendix was so inflamed that treatment required two operations, one to drain it and a second in September to remove it. She was at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center for nearly a month. She still has a deep curving scar on her lower right abdomen from her surgery.

Ms. Harris said that on Nov. 18, 2005, she was fired from her job for reasons that she still struggles to understand. ''The only thing that I could see was that I was sick,'' she said. She missed a lot of work and said the union did not take up her case.

She had used her $29,557 yearly salary to put her daughter, Antastasia Nicole Harris, through a training program in the nursing field.

Without a job, she said she was worried that she would not be able to do the same for her son. ''I thought that my son would be terminated at the end of the semester,'' she said.

Ms. Harris's son is a junior at Green Mountain College in Vermont, where he plays on the basketball team and majors in sports management. ''I played basketball all my life, so that's something that I want to do -- being in sports,'' Mr. Howlett said.

Tuition at the Vermont college is $32,000 a year, paid with financial aid, grants, student loans and work study. ''Mine just goes to tuition,'' said Mr. Howlett of his work-study income.

The family also pays $500 each month. When he graduates in May 2008, he will be the first in his family to earn a bachelor's degree.

While Mr. Howlett was gaining a footing with his college life in Vermont, Ms. Harris said she felt like she was losing her ground in New York.

''I gave up hope when I was on unemployment,'' Ms. Harris said. ''I was in that state of mind because I was hurt.''

Depression made looking for work difficult. ''I've been depressed like this ever since they terminated me,'' she said.

In September, Ms. Harris applied for and began receiving public assistance of $100 a month and $198 a month in food stamps. Her rent in public housing was lowered to $143 a month after she qualified for public assistance.

She was referred to the Work Experience Program run through Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. There, Ms. Harris met Diana Rivera, a case manager, who has helped Ms. Harris turn the corner. ''When I first got there I was looking out the window, crying, crying, crying,'' Ms. Harris said.

Ms. Rivera said she took a particular interest in Ms. Harris's case.

''I was so compelled by her story,'' Ms. Rivera said. ''The world was pulled from under her feet.'' Ms. Rivera helped Ms. Harris get therapy, acquire interview clothes and seek out food pantries.

And they talked. ''Dee Dee is gorgeous. She's a beautiful person,'' Ms. Harris said of Ms. Rivera.

The agency used $500 in Neediest Cases money to cover Ms. Harris's portion of Mr. Howlett's January tuition. ''It means a lot. I appreciate it, and it really, really, helped my family,'' she said.

Ms. Harris is currently in a 90-day work program with the New York City Transit. ''I love it. We clean train stations,'' she said.

With Ms. Rivera's help she has put together a r?m?nd references and is ready to search for a permanent position. She has begun to attend job fairs. She feels stronger. ''That's why I want to go back to work,'' she said. ''I want to stay in maintenance or housekeeping. That's my field; I feel comfortable in that.''

HOW TO HELP

Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11245, or any of these organizations:

UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK
Church Street Station
P.O. Box 4100
New York, N.Y. 10261-4100

Donations may be made with a credit card by phone at (800) 381-0075 or online, courtesy of NYCharities.org, an Internet donations service, at www.nytimes.com/neediest or www.nycharities.org/neediest. For instructions on how to donate stock to the fund, call (212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 556-4450.

No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.

Contributions to the fund are deductible on federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.

To delay may mean to forget.

Previously recorded: $4,697,117.83
Recorded Thursday: $1,085,148.71
Total: $5,782,266.54
Last year to date: $5,467,648.56

Photo: Nancy Harris, 51, with certificates she has received from various agencies. A hospital housekeeping worker, she has been unemployed for a year. (Photo by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times)